RMMV Shora Lighting Plugin (Real-time shadow with heavily optimized lighting) (MV/MZ)

[Shora]

Intoduction


This is my first graphics plugin for RPG Maker MV/MZ, but i have made it for 9 months~. After lots of failure in quality and effectively, now i can finally, introduce to you, Shora Lighting Plugin, with real-time dynamic shadow and statics light!. It have been optimized heavily too focus in quality, and i have rebuild this plugin for 4-5 times. I began this projuct in about 3/2020, and come through a lot from it.


Features


Modern, lightweight lighting plugin for MV/MZ.


User-friendly Interface, will have a GUI for users to use, but it can originally use just by event’ comment.


Light from your customized images. But it can be tranformed, rotate, scale anytime you want!


Two custom light sprite types: Dynamic and Static. Static light are generated from dynamic snap-shot for create as much lights as you want, and dynamic light with beautiful animation (espeacially shadow!).


Effect are rendered using WebGL shaders. But, for MV it have canvas fallback too!


GUI System is a independence plugin for you to easier creating beautiful lighting: You can dynamically change, customize, and export your light config! Use it in event’ comment for best quality.


And, the most important, Dynamic Real-time Shadow! It was the feature i put a lots of my efforts into. Including optimizing region, creating shadow on walls, ambient shadow and much more! Ever since Khas Lighting come out, no lighting plugin have the shadow feature so i was thinking, why not? . It use the region scan for shadow caster, but heavily optimized. Can made it effectively as the Khas Ultra Lighting one in RPG Maker Vx Ace, but will (and try to) be better than Khas Advanced Lighting in MV!


To do:


Battles Lighting (of course!)


More optimize and more quality.


Fix various bugs that i created myself (lol)


Complete the GUI for more user-friendly.


Screenshots (will be updated, because i’m not so good at making map :<)


A quick view into the dynamic shadow:

Future Plan
Although this project have been developed for almost 9 months, it's still lack in performance and need to be testing more. The project now have more than 3000~ line of codes, and i will release it in near future . If you want to be a tester for this plugin, please contact this account or email: neetgaming1@gmail.com. My discord: Shora#7020 .I can answer every question you have for this plugin in this thread . Happy Game Making! .

P/S: For anyone want to test this plugin, please contact my discord: Shora#7020 for easier feedback and updating the plugin . I'm updating this plugin every days so take a look!

P/S.2: This plugin is heavily optimized for RPG Maker MZ, since PIXIJS V5 has a lots of improvement on it renderer. However its still compatible with MV, just worse in performance. I welcome everyone in giving feedback if you want to test it out

 

[Puffer]

shut up and take my money!!!

 

[ShadowDragon]

if it become better than khas one, it will be amazing, khas is good with the only shadow
feature, ocram has a nice lightning plugin but community lighting does a pretty awesome
job too.

while dynamic shadows looks awesome, I would like to test it how it works out =)
very nice job indeed

I know another one with a GUI and has a plugin command for closing and open doors on
specific time system that can change from morning to night with the light plugin.

this looks very promising as well, if you can overcome khas plugin, you become nr 1
so it can become a wild plugin ^^

 

[Hyouryuu-Na]

Just in time! I've been having trouble with Khas' plugin lately. Hopefully this one's smoother and less laggy ^^ It's so good to see someone try something so complicated like this with the realtime shadows and all. Keep up the good work!

 

[Shora]

if it become better than khas one, it will be amazing, khas is good with the only shadow
feature, ocram has a nice lightning plugin but community lighting does a pretty awesome
job too.

while dynamic shadows looks awesome, I would like to test it how it works out =)
very nice job indeed

I know another one with a GUI and has a plugin command for closing and open doors on
specific time system that can change from morning to night with the light plugin.

this looks very promising as well, if you can overcome khas plugin, you become nr 1
so it can become a wild plugin ^^

Thanks for your reply . I am trying to make this plugin more quality and effective (it already user-friendly enough xd). The GUI is just a feature i quickly make to help tester easier to decoration their map (you can find out the fittest configuration to your lighting event ;D. If you want to test how it work out, just leave me a message . Everyone is very welcome to test my plugin

 

[Shora]

Just in time! I've been having trouble with Khas' plugin lately. Hopefully this one's smoother and less laggy ^^ It's so good to see someone try something so complicated like this with the realtime shadows and all. Keep up the good work!

Happy to hear that ^^. This plugin is originally made for MV, but now i'm focusing it into MZ through (MZ have optimized more for WebGL stuffs). MV is still good through, and if you want to test out how the plugin work, just contact me xD. The shadow part may still have bug and doesn't optmized enough, but its can be improved with you guys feedback .

 

[GmOcean]

This looks really good. I love the dynamic shadow effects it has. I do have a couple questions if you don't mind.
1. Can lights be placed anywhere or is it only attached to the player? I'm under the assumption they're attached to events but clarification on how they can be applied would be nice.
2. Do players/NPCs cast shadows or just terrain?
3. Expanding on #2, do objects cast shadows, for instance a statue on B/C tileset?
4. How do dynamic lights interact with each other? For example, if I have a wall in the middle (3 tiles tall), and a light on the right and left of the wall, in reality the shadow would be darkest at the top and bottom. My question is does this accurately project that, or does one light have higher priority such as being a layer above? Sorry if the question is confusing, just woke up hard to iterate what I mean.

Again though, this looks amazing. If I wasn't so new to the RM series as a whole I'd love to test it out, but I wouldn't be able to give you useful feedback for development purposes.

 

[Shora]

This looks really good. I love the dynamic shadow effects it has. I do have a couple questions if you don't mind.
1. Can lights be placed anywhere or is it only attached to the player? I'm under the assumption they're attached to events but clarification on how they can be applied would be nice.
2. Do players/NPCs cast shadows or just terrain?
3. Expanding on #2, do objects cast shadows, for instance a statue on B/C tileset?
4. How do dynamic lights interact with each other? For example, if I have a wall in the middle (3 tiles tall), and a light on the right and left of the wall, in reality the shadow would be darkest at the top and bottom. My question is does this accurately project that, or does one light have higher priority such as being a layer above? Sorry if the question is confusing, just woke up hard to iterate what I mean.

Again though, this looks amazing. If I wasn't so new to the RM series as a whole I'd love to test it out, but I wouldn't be able to give you useful feedback for development purposes.

Hello Thanks for your compliment!
As your question:
1. Yes, light can be placed anywhere. For user-friendly, it mainly use event to place light, but for advanced user you cam freely customize it offset
2. For user-friendly purpose, assume that just region-tile work on being a shadow caster. But, it will have the option to create any shape of caster you want, because it will cast at the bottom of the object . Still, this is very beta feature (I need to load the object image itself to overlay with the shadow, and user need to figure out the "line" of the object bottom root), so it will not included in the first release. Stil, i will certainly include this in future update, or a addition advanced-feature plugin .
3. I have answered in #2 .
4. I still cannot certainly understand your question . But to classify, the light haven't have the layer feature yet. Still, the shadow already have the visual that darkening the top walls, and you can change how it dark . And, every lights have the ambient shadow color, which change how darken it is in the shadow part. If you want to have priority ambient light, just cleverly configuration the light

 

[GmOcean]

Hello Thanks for your compliment!
As your question:
1. Yes, light can be placed anywhere. For user-friendly, it mainly use event to place light, but for advanced user you cam freely customize it offset
2. For user-friendly purpose, assume that just region-tile work on being a shadow caster. But, it will have the option to create any shape of caster you want, because it will cast at the bottom of the object . Still, this is very beta feature (I need to load the object image itself to overlay with the shadow, and user need to figure out the "line" of the object bottom root), so it will not included in the first release. Stil, i will certainly include this in future update, or a addition advanced-feature plugin .
3. I have answered in #2 .
4. I still cannot certainly understand your question . But to classify, the light haven't have the layer feature yet. Still, the shadow already have the visual that darkening the top walls, and you can change how it dark . And, every lights have the ambient shadow color, which change how darken it is in the shadow part. If you want to have priority ambient light, just cleverly configuration the light

Thanks for the detailed answers. And you answered #4 in the last couple sentences. That's what I was trying to ask. Would shadows overlap with each other. Now that I've had coffee it's so much easier to state. Thanks again, and good luck on future development.

 

[Shora]

Hello everyone!. It a few days from i posted this, but a survey is needed for releasing the plugin . Do you think that canvas fallback for MV version is necessary?. From the beginning when i created this plugin, i always add canvas as a option (fallback is cool!). But now, since the release of MZ with the only-WebGL feature, i want to make a decision on this problem . Canvas is possible, but it is slower (of course), and do not as beautiful as WebGL was (It doe NOT have the ambient shadow, which made the shadow to be back like default. Also, a lots of realistic visual will be gone.). So, what do you prefer?

 

[Siul]

OMG this is AWESOME!

Even more once Khas is kinda retired.

Shora, any chances to have a MZ port for this? WHERE IS YOUR ******* TO MAKE IT REAL?!!

 

[Shora]

OMG this is AWESOME!

Even more once Khas is kinda retired.

Shora, any chances to have a MZ port for this? WHERE IS YOUR ******* TO MAKE IT REAL?!!

Hello . I'm glad to hear that you are interested in the plugin. As your question, if you read the post carefully (and the title), this plugin supported both MV and MZ. However, MZ is more focused in, since it the latest version of RPG Maker, and PIXIJS V5 is more optimized for this plugin, both in performance and quality. If you want to try it out, just contact by discord! I always appreciate feedback and suggestion .

 

[MasterTenchi]

Dropped a Discord Friend Request:: I'll put the plugin through some serious test paces if you'd like.

 

[Shora]

Dropped a Discord Friend Request:: I'll put the plugin through some serious test paces if you'd like.

I'm happy to hear that . Accepted your friend request. Also, the test you said look promising. I'm currently focusing a lot on furthermore improving the performance (like using a quadtree data structure, make spatial grid on the map, ...), so seeing the improvement by some test is really good (i'm working on that right now). Check of your discord message !

 

[Sinister]

Hey I'd like to give it a test! I'm KJ#2628 I sent a Discord request.

 

[Shora]

Hey I'd like to give it a test! I'm KJ#2628 I sent a Discord request.

Thanks to your intention . However, i haven't seen any friend request from you though. I sent you a friend request, check it out!

 

[Hyouryuu-Na]

I don't use discord (is that weird?)... Anyways, that's why I sent you a mail ^^

 

[Sinister]

Thanks to your intention . However, i haven't seen any friend request from you though. I sent you a friend request, check it out!

I sent another just to be sure, you're Shora#7020 right? Make sure your message requests are open to everyone. Mine's KJ#2628 But I haven't seen one yet.

 

[Shora]

I sent another just to be sure, you're Shora#7020 right? Make sure your message requests are open to everyone. Mine's KJ#2628 But I haven't seen one yet.

I'm sure that my message opening for everyone though, because there are some people testing the plugin right now from discord. Please check again .

 

[Underserial]

is there a option that u do also shadows for the characters?
Like if i have a fireplace it throws a shadow for the char and events ?!

like: